A DEI ban could mean fewer diverse concepts from many schools following the lead of many other republican controlled states. House and Senate lawmakers approved a compromise bill in votes on Tuesday and Wednesday. It will likely head to Republican Gov. Tate Reeves for his signature after it clears a procedural motion.

This could get rid of academic freedom in the long struggle to make Mississippi a fairer place for minority students, this new bill could bog universities down with legal issues and setbacks Democratic Rep. Bryant Clark, who seldom addresses the entire House chamber from the podium during debates, rose to speak out against the bill on Tuesday. He is the son of the late Robert Clark, the first Black Mississippian elected to the state Legislature since the 1800s and the first Black Mississippian to serve as speaker pro tempore and preside over the House chamber since Reconstruction.

“We are better than this, and all of you know that we don’t need this with Mississippi’s history,” Clark said. “We should be the ones that say, ‘listen, we may be from Mississippi, we may have a dark past, but you know what, we’re going to be the first to stand up this time and say there is nothing wrong with DEI.’”

But as many senators say, they’re not trying to get rid of diversity in Mississippi, but instead trying to “We’re just trying to change the focus back to that of excellence.” Some senators wanted the bill to be “semi-vague” in its language and wanted to create a process for withholding state funds based on complaints that almost anyone could lodge.

This new bill will bog universities down and could go against universities in Mississippi that don’t have the best history even tho they’ve changed, and it seems everything is still vague with what exactly this would do but the idea being pushed is if there is a violation, the school needs to cure the violation. That’s what the purpose is. It’s not to create litigation, it’s to cure violations.